Lubuntu v.15.04

My Lubuntu desktop (Wallpaper not included.)

Despite my best efforts not to permit the upgrade to 14.04.10, Ubuntu 14.04 finally shit the bed. Since I have previously had to reinstall the OS not once but twice before due to what I finally concluded was the Unity desktop incompatibility with my hardware, I decided to install a much lighter version also based on Debian.  But more on that in a sec.

I knew Ubuntu would eventually update itself and that it would bork my system. It was a foregone conclusion given the trail of tears that Ubuntu is fast becoming.  The darling of the Linux world becomes more like Windows with each update, unfortunately. In fact, version 15.04 has become an OS that only functions on brand, spanking new hardware -I'm afraid- which is what killed v.14.04 on my system in the first place.  Don't even think about installing Ubuntu without at least 4GB RAM regardless of what the developers try to sell you.  Further, Unity is not only an enormous resource hog, but it also does not play well with video display adapters older than two years, especially Nvidia brand controllers. All that being said, let's move on to Lubuntu.

Like its cousin Xubuntu, Lubuntu is meant for low-RAM hardware and older PCs like my ghetto laptop. The name is a portmanteau of the LXDE desktop GUI.  It is essentially the same great taste as Ubuntu but a lot less filling. (Actually, Ubuntu is ::BLOATED:: in my opinion.  Don't be surprised if it blows up to an obese piece of crap exactly like Windows in an attempt to appease the future shareholders Shuttleworth intends to woo.)

So far, Lubuntu 15.04 functions as promised.  Since it is considered light, it is a lot more efficient than Ubuntu ever was. The only application it does not seem to like is gedit, which doesn't make any sense since the app is just a plain vanilla text editor. But for whatever reason, it locks up the system. Additionally, the OS suffers from a legacy problem that carried over to the current version because of dependencies on other packages.  I would have thought it would have been addressed long before v.15.04 but apparently not. (Wait. Let me guess. All five people on the planet (four of them being developers and me, the only end user) using the current version of the distro haven't discovered the keyring problem because I didn't report it as a bug.)

Upon logging in, Lubuntu would then prompt for a password to keyring because another app wanted to use it. (In this instance, keyring needed a password to be able to access networking to be able to use the wifi.) I conducted a little research online, and, after digging around in my system for a bit, made the determination that keyring was evidently discontinued.  Yet NOWHERE on the Lubuntu distro pages is this fact mentioned, however.  Seahorse was supposed to have replaced keyring, except that Lubuntu never bothered to include it in v.15.04.  So I had to install it manually and then proceed to fight with Seahorse to stop keyring from the annoying prompts for a second password.  Eventually I got it to stop but only after hours of struggling because it seems the solution is different for different systems.  I like using Linux distros, but this particular aspect is what I find the most maddening.  Is it really that difficult for someone at the Lubuntu organization to resolve simplistic bugs like this one?

Anyone?

Buehler...

Buehler...

Attention Lubuntu Community and LXDE Foundation:

Don't trumpet from the rafters how amazing your latest version is and then not bother to address legacy problems like keyring.  This was also an issue on Ubuntu -however- it was fixed by the time v.14.04 came along.  If Shuttleworth's org can get it addressed in between soy lattes, chia muffins, and, firing employees who won't toss roses at his feet/kiss his ring, then what's your deal?

Another dumb issue that is not necessarily a bug, but may as well be - Linux is touted as a secure OS.  Why THE HELL then does Ubuntu and all of its namesakes come with a guest account enabled by default?

Have I missed the memo on why it's a good idea to leave a vulnerability such as a password-free account like guest enabled?

It can be argued that the guest account's privileges are limited, however, why leave it enabled by default? If someone wants to bork your system, and the guest account is the only "in" they have, rest assured, the douche will find a way around a limited account. Disable this retarded oversight immediately.

In conclusion, I won't reinvent the wheel by listing the installed software especially since you will find a list of those apps on the Wiki page, but I will say this much.  Abiword sucks ass.  If you are accustomed to the power/versatility of LibreOffice or OpenOffice Writer, then don't bother with it.  Remove it and install your favorite open source office writer, instead.  You'll be much happier if you do as Abiword is meant for less knowledgeable end users. Presumably.

Let's hope Lubuntu's next big planned update does not unnecessarily bloat the OS and otherwise bork the installations of it on older hardware like Ubuntu did.


UPDATE - 06-11-2015

LibreOffice v. 4.4.2 (and probably 4.4.3) Writer was not working correctly on Lubuntu 15.04 when I attempted to use it to design a brochure.  Images could be embedded in Draw, but not in Writer. All that was visible was the frame for it, but not the actual image.  Curious.

So I uninstalled the entire suite and installed my standby Apache OpenOffice. Meanwhile the LibreOffice fanbois will tell you that AOO was "abandoned" and to use LOO, instead.  But from what I've seen, LOO suffers from instability and half-assed updates that bork certain modules -particularly Writer- and the response from the community is a collective shrug.

Also, Scribus v.1.4.4 is a steaming pile of instability on Lubuntu 15.04.  Avoid.

The Garden of Survival

Algernon Blackwood (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) may not be a name you’re familiar with but when it comes to supernatural tales of horror, he is in good company with old-school writers Lovecraft and Machen, both considered great-granddaddies of the grotesque. 

Prior to The Garden of Survival, I had read half a dozen other stories written by Blackwood between 1907 - 1914 including:

• The Willows (1907)
• The Insanity of Jones (1907)
• The Glamour of the Snow (1912)
• The Man Whom the Trees Loved (1912)
• The Damned (1914)
• A Descent Into Egypt (1914)

Each tale had its very own peculiar but exquisite piquancy of horror --Blackwood is the count of creepiness, after all-- And although I have read the above referenced books over a period of the past four years or so, I am still haunted by the likes of Jones and, especially, both of the trees stories.  Blackwood had the ability to conjure in the reader’s imagination a perfectly tranquil, wooded place of verdant serenity and then mutate it into a panorama of psychosis. (Or is that just me?)

As a point of reference for the uninitiated of either the writer or the genre, understand that these books contain absolutely none of the worthlessness written by Stephen King who, incidentally, during his heyday in the eighties, had borrowed heavily from past horror writers whose stories had conveniently passed into the public domain thereby leaving King free to plunder ideas, add his own smattering of ephedrine-induced cheese, and, to otherwise pass off the ideas as his own with impunity.  (Yes, I’m letting you know how I really feel.)

The Garden of Survival, written in 1918, began in Blackwood’s usual polished and expressive style.  His protagonist, Richard, a former military man now making a living as a foreign diplomat in Africa, details in epistolary format his musings of life and love.  We are informed of his having been married for a very short time --his wife, a vision of beauty and possessing a special talent to bewitch admirers by playing her alluring harp for them is Je ne se quoi personified, it seems. And given the short duration of the marriage, as well as a few well-placed ominous descriptions of her penchant for attracting the opposite sex, the reader soon gets the idea that this woman is most definitely not what she seems.

In fact, even long after her death, Blackwood spends a good third of the book recounting for us the extent to which Richard truly believes his soul has been positively vanquished and seduced by his wife. Personally, I was expecting her to be revealed as a succubus put on earth for the sole purpose of ensnaring men and dragging them back to Hell with her.  But then again, is that not the same impression you would get from a writer who looked like this?

"Algernon Blackwood" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Algernon_Blackwood.jpg#/media/File:Algernon_Blackwood.jpg

But then Blackwood segues from idealizing Richard's dead wife to sentimentalizing his frail, elderly mother living alone on her estate in England with her memories of having raised her sons, and, then back to his angelically described twin brother again which we eventually determine is also dead.  The last third of the book seemed to me like I was reading a eulogy of sorts. 

Come to me instead—or, rather, stay, since you have never left—be with me still in the wonder of dawn and twilight, in the yearning desire of inarticulate black night, in the wind, the sunshine, and the rain. It is then that I am nearest to you and to your beneficent activity, for the same elemental rhythm of Beauty includes us both.

The story is both enticing and ethereal.  The description of Richard’s childhood garden is vaguely remniscent of the biblical Garden of Eden.  And while we don't really connect the title of this story to the plot, the tale beguiles the reader, nonetheless, to press on with the expectation that something Big and Sinister is about to transpire if we will just be patient.  And therein, I suppose, lies the rub.  Richard’s deceased wife does not actually turn out to be anything but a catalyst for a rather elegant epiphany which concludes that as much as we may imagine/obsess about loved ones who have since passed into the Hereafter visiting us --whether it is in our dreams or while we are walking down a misty, water-colored path in the garden of our imaginations-- the fact is, they do not.  They, instead, only seem to come back each time we remember the effect they had on us while they were alive.  It’s a beautiful story, but not the ending I had envisaged.

Refs:

Download and read The Garden of Survival for FREE here.

Avoid the Upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

As it turns out, the latest upgrade (v.14.04.02 to be exact) to the long term support version of Ubuntu 14.04 is a colossal failure; At least for anyone using certain video controllers, that is.  I can't speak for anyone else's video card, but if you take a peek at AskUbuntu dot com, and search for "GUI disappeared" or "Can't log into GUI," you will find a shit ton of unhappy Ubuntu users all with different brand cards desperately attempting to find help to reenable the Unity desktop.

For my purposes here, however, I will speak only of the VGA controller on my beater laptop.  This glorified Dell brand doorstop's video controller is an Nvidia G72M Quadro NVS 110M GeForce Go 7300 and it doesn't much like the upgrade.  In fact, upon reboot after installation, if you are using this card then your desktop will be disappeared when you attempt to log back into the GUI. Sure, you can still hit a CTRL + F1 and login at the non-shell prompt, but that's about it.  Your desktop is, for all intents and purposes, completely and utterly nuked. Don't bother searching for help on AskUbuntu because the community doesn't really have a solution. While there are many suggestions to reenable the GUI, not all of them work for everyone. Case in point: Yours truly.

So after my desktop was removed by the 14.04.02 upgrade, I had to make a decision.  Go round and round and round with trial and error suggestions, spending hours upon hours trying to get back the Unity desktop or just bite the bullet and reinstall the OS. Shades of Microsoft Windows here, folks. Is it just me or is Ubuntu becoming more and more like MS?  As evidenced by its ever increasing, voracious appetite for RAM, and now, an upgrade to the LTS version screws up the GUI so badly it necessitates an OS reinstall, I think the writing on the wall is slowly becoming visible. Not good, people.  Not good at all.  If this shit keeps up, I smell an Ubuntu partition wiping in my triple boot laptop's future.

For those of you still reading and not sure whether the 14.04.02 upgrade will farck up your system, the following may be helpful.  It is a screencap of the window that appears upon a system update.

If you are unsure as to whether the upgrade will adversely affect your system irrevocably, you will, of course, want to avoid clicking on partial upgrade.  But to move forward with updates to the rest of the system, just click continue.  This action will result in asking for authentication and the usual list of software updates to download and install.  Thereafter, you will want to go into settings and remove the check for updates to the OS else you will be perpetually nagged by the Not all updates can be installed screen.

In closing, please note here that if your system is using the generic Linux Nouveau video driver, then you are probably safe and the 14.04.02 upgrade probably won't affect you, however, I include this blurb only as a suggestion.  The smart thing to do would be to download and burn to a disc the 14.04.02 upgrade and attempt to run it as live CD on your system to see if your video card will even render the demo.  If it does not, then you know it will nuke your desktop.

OTOH, if you read this entry and are confident your VGA controller will not be affected by the upgrade, and it turns out that it does in fact, nuke your system, don't come bitchin' to me about it.  I make absolutely no guarantees.  In fact, if your GUI does crap out upon installing the upgrade then you should contact Canonical and let them know that 14.04.02 is an epic FAIL because that seems to be the general consensus on AskUbuntu in not so many words.  Actually, the word "fail" is not used because the thought police on aforementioned website do not permit words to be published that can even be remotely construed to be critical of Ubuntu.

The sun is always shining in AskUbuntu land courtesy of the heavy handed moderators who patrol the site and immediately remove anything anyone has written that can be interpreted as criticism whether constructive or not.  I guess that's one way to ensure that the little people don't bad mouth the distro that billionaire Shuttleworth so desperately wants to monetize even having resorted to including a potential security hole enabled by default in the 14.04 LTS version debut.  Now to be accurate, this fiasco has since been addressed by Canonical, however, it was not until much Sturm und Drang generated by this site that it even acknowledged there was a problem with sending user searches to Amazon without knowledge or consent.  Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before Ubuntu becomes the OS to avoid because its source code has been completely compromised the better to add another dozen digits to Shuttleworth's bank account.

By the way, this same update to Linux Mint Maya 13 does not nuke the desktop, but then, it would not since Mint does not use Unity (which seems to be becoming a problem child.) I mention it here because Mint and Ubuntu are both based on Debian and download updates from the same repositories.

Tis the Season for "Lost" Mail

First off, let me set forth the following disclaimer. My opinions are my own and have nothing whatsoever to do with the politics of the subject matter. I am writing strictly from the standpoint of a consumer with no political ideologies for or against. So if you're looking for political bias to grab onto and spew the usual tired, partisan crap, I'm going to suggest that you stop reading right here right now, otherwise you'll be wasting both your time as well as mine. All that being said, let's get to the point, shall we?

Subject: The United States Postal Service

Was that a collective groan I just heard from the audience? Yes, I'm quite sure that it was since the postal service has become a political football for both sides of the political duopoly. If you haven't been following along, then let me bring you up to speed. Here's the score so far: The red team wants to privatize the post office because insert latest political ideology here. Meanwhile, the blue team says the red team only wants to privatize the mail because it hates public unions. Frankly, I don't give a toss about what either side alleges to further its own completely self-serving agenda. All I know is that as a consumer who is forced to rely on the USPS for mail delivery, I am quite unhappy given the latest post office fail.

The broad strokes are such that a friend mailed a parcel from a post office to my PO Box within the same state. This friend stood on a really long line one sunny Saturday morning, paid the extra jack for a tracking number, and, trusted the US Mail to get the package to me. The average person would assume a successful delivery was imminent. While I don't have the stats as to how frequently the post office drops the ball, if these thousands of pages of complaints are any indication, I'd say that the USPS has an awful lot of explaining to do, particularly given that a mail delivery service in the private sector with a similar track history would have been shuttered decades ago, not rewarded with a continued monopoly.

Suffice it to say, the post office received the parcel addressed to me and scanned it into its system. This was evidenced by the fact that looking up the tracking number online indicated delivery. Knowing it had arrived, I went to the post office with tracking number in hand to pick it up and was promptly told they couldn't find it. A lost episode from the Three Stooges ensued accordingly.

The initial response was to tell me that certain clerks had to be consulted as to where the parcel was put after it was checked in. Apparently, it wasn't where it was supposed to be. This required a conference between the supervisor and the clerk(s) responsible. (Or so I was told.) Of course, this happened the day before Thanksgiving and the clerks who handled checking in the mail were off for the day.

No dice, little consumer, try back later.

When I called on Friday and asked for a status update, I had to re-explain what happened and provide the tracking number yet again. I was told the missing package was being investigated, whatever that meant. When I asked for clarification, I was rebuffed.

Saturday was pretty much the same ordeal – more excuses, hemming/hawing followed by a rolling of the eyes and a shrug that I swear I could actually see and hear over the phone. I was told, “We're looking into it.” There was absolutely nothing even remotely resembling customer service – just an urgent need to make excuses and to otherwise rush me off the phone. I was told by the supervisor who took the call that day that I was “abusing” him.

Really? Asking questions about a parcel that was delivered directly to the post office and subsequently lost is now considered abuse. That's a new one on me since my job requires providing adequate responses when something goes wrong. It would be funny if it wasn't standard operating procedure for the post office to shrug off missing and lost mail.

Given that there has been no time line as to when I could expect a resolution, or any kind of follow up as to what had been done to locate my missing package, I can only hypothesize as to what happened. I strongly suspect theft. Oh yes, Virginia, mail theft is perpetrated by mail room employees more often than not. How easy is it to break into someone else's parcel in the back room, take whatever you want and then toss the box aside only to claim later, when the recipient comes looking for it, that you can't find it? I suspect it's quite easy for postal employees to steal mail and the contents of parcels since there doesn't seem to be any kind of accountability. In fact, the official response to my lost parcel was a collective shrug.

So who do we blame? What can be done about mail theft perpetrated by postal employees?

The usual excuses as to why employees don't measure up don't apply here because if you work for the post office then you are compensated quite nicely, not to mention, practically guaranteed a six figure pension upon retirement. But hey, don't take my word for it, according to an audit of the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), USPS has overpaid by $11.4 billion into its pension funds. Postal employees have very little to zero reason to be disgruntled about anything so committing petty mail theft is just apparently something that is perpetrated for grins and giggles.

Compared to private sector employment, generally speaking, compensation for college educated rank and file grunts is down. Wages are stagnant. Pensions are non-existent. Companies are stingy and make Scrooge's spending habits look like a drunken sailor. Cogs don't get raises, they get pink-slipped, instead, especially if there is a blip on the Dow with the company's stock price. Only the corporate officers see any kind of substantive raise in their paycheck. Meanwhile, the public union works quite nicely for its members whether they perform competently or decide to steal the contents of your mail. 

Members start out with living wages and their salary increases from there. Sure, there is the constant grumbling -government employees never seem to miss a break or a vacation-  but compared to private sector employment, public unions have a pretty sweet deal for their members. I can only surmise that competency factors very little into continued employment or even job performance. And from what I've seen, you can never be terminated even if you screw up because the union protects your job - Oh, you've lost someone's parcel containing irreplaceable Christmas gifts for a small child? Here's a pat on the back and a raise for you, Archie! Nice work. Maybe next time you can “lose” (wink nudge wink) Grandma's life-saving medication for the win.

This is all wonderful for government employees who can never be fired, and, political partisans who debate endlessly as to privatizing the postal service and otherwise provide a smoke and mirrors distraction for the gullible who are unable/unwilling to see what's really going on. But in the final analysis, consumers are the ones who are ripped off.

The resolution to my particular ordeal with my lost parcel is to file a claim that will take about a month to be processed. To add further insult to injury, in order to file said claim, copies of receipts from everything that was in the parcel must be included in the claim – yes, because keeping copies of receipts from items purchased and sent as Christmas gifts is foremost on the average American's mind, isn't it?

What –you mean you haven't kept your receipts from the past year from all the year-round Christmas shopping you've been doing?

Too bad so sad sayeth the USPS.

But let's just continue to be distracted by the non-issues:

Blue Team accusation: You want to privatize the postal service because you hate unions!

Red Team response: We do not! Privatizing every governmental service is the answer to America's problems!

And on it goes.  Meanwhile, mail is pilfered by postal employees, and, the USPS continues operations in the same shoddy, half-assed manner it always has year after year.

Eye roll.

Shrug.

***

UPDATE (as of 12-8-14)
A complaint was filed with the OIG however, little did I realize that obtaining a copy of it would necessitate (according to the USPS) a FOIA request, which opens up a whole other issue.  Stay tuned to Twitter @bikinit for future updates as I intend to provide another installment so that the public may gain a better understanding of (1) FOIA requests and (2) how the Government, specifically, the Office of the Inspector General and the US Postal Service handles complaints about mail theft perpetrated by US postal employees.

©2014 GreensleevesBikinIt. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from GreensleevesBikinIt is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to GreensleevesBikinIt with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Linux Mint 13: Package Refresh Error

Today brought another opportunity to tinker with one of my Linux distros in order to resolve a problem.  (Note:  If you haven't been following along, I have a triple-boot beater laptop that I described here.)  

At any rate, the issue in question was with the update manager.  I noticed a red X across the normally green checked shield located in the taskbar to the left of the date.  A green check usually signifies the system is current with updates and so the red X was problematic.  When I clicked on the "info" this was the error message.

After checking around various Linux Mint forums and attempting various suggestions, including the following command to clean up (and remove thereafter) existing outdated repositories the red X persisted. 

sudo apt-get -f install

Following is another error.  

Ok, so evidently, the problem is with the repository index.  Another check on the web yielded this fix, so it was off to a terminal I went and input the following commands.

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf
sudo apt-get update

This seemed to resolve the red X problem.  The customary green checkmark was visible in the shield, but ten minutes later, although the system apparently updated, the problem has returned and the red X is back.

I'm sure there is a simple fix for this problem (hopefully) but as of this writing, I haven't yet found it.  Stay tuned.

Trusty Tahr Chokes on BCM4313

Another Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installation on a client machine has brought yet another issue I wanted to bring to the forefront.  If your system is using a Broadcom BCM4313 wifi card, you may encounter some issues getting it to work with your router.

From what I've researched, apparently the BCM4313 is giving the Ubuntu Community seizures in trying to successfully write code to get an open source driver to work in Trusty Tahr.  On the other hand, the proprietary driver -provided you didn't goof like I did- will work.  And if you did zig when you should have zagged, as is almost always the case with Linux, there is a fix.

In order to avoid the problem, here's what you should not do:  Enable updates while installing the OS.

Doing so apparently blacklists the brcmsmac kernel and nukes the driver.  Or so sayeth the Venerated One in this discussion.  However, once you perform a little sudo apt-get and sudo su echo action to de-blacklist it, wifi connectivity with the BCM4313 chip is supposed to enable in v.14.04 LTS.

I haven't put it to the test as of yet on the client system in question, but when I do, I will be sure to report the results.  In the meantime, if your system is using the BCM4313 network controller, and you're about to execute a dual-boot installation of Trusty Tahr, remember to uncheck the enable network updates options.

Just as a refresher, to check what the name of the network controller is in a Linux OS, type the following command into a terminal:

lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4

If you're using Windoze, and plan to partition the HDD for a dual-boot install, just go into Device Manager to get the name of the controller.

Happy Linuxing!

UPDATE:  10/10/2014

Since I was able to get the customer's wifi working using Broadcom's proprietary driver using the commands from the above referenced brcmsmac discussion, it's safe to confirm that the de-blacklisting does in fact un-fubar the fubar that occurs to the proprietary driver if you select network updates during the OS installation.  Lesson learned:  If you know that you pc is using the BCM4313 network card, be sure not to select the network updates until after you've installed the OS.


©2014 Greensleeves. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from Greensleeves. is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Greensleeves. with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Eight Types of People Who Rent Out Rooms

What You See Is Not What You Get

As it turns out, looking for a room to rent is an entirely new level of Dante's Hell.  To be clear, I am not referring to renting an apartment, which, as tedious/expensive as it may be what with filling out rental apps, paying an astronomical deposit and paying for the credit check, is still a lot more pleasant than the process of finding a room.  At least with an apartment, you know that when all is said and done, you got what you thought you were paying for.  And if there are any schizzo roommates in the equation it's because you signed a lease with them or invited them to live with you to help with the rent. (Mileage may and does vary.)  

When you rent a room out of someone's home, however, while you may be avoiding having to sign a lease or permit a peek at your credit history, the aggravation you miss in the usual process is more than made up for elsewhere.  Case in point:  the kinds of people you will inevitably end up dealing with.  Once in a very blue moon you may get lucky and find functioning people, but that does not seem to be the norm for those who advertise a spare room for rent.

In fact, renting a room is kind of like using public transportation.  You hope that you don't find yourself seated next to that guy on the bus with the inexplicably enlarged pupils  who waits for you to nod off  and then beheads you and eats your organs.

How Psychotic Are They?

Homeowners fall into multiple categories, sometimes simultaneously, each one more spectacularly bad than the one before it.  Invariably, these people have been told, or have read some corporately consolidated media fucktard writer's thoughts about all the nifty extra cash they can be making by renting out the spare room in their home.  The thing is tho that few of these people looking for easy money ever think past their own noses.  All they can see are the dollar signs.  And regardless of location, nowhere else can you experience firsthand the unchecked, undiagnosed mental illness/dysfunction of the average American than by renting a room.  College roommates be damned.

I would surmise that approximately 95% of those who rent rooms out of their homes fall into one (or several) of the following categories.

Passive-Aggressive:  You are enjoying the extra money renting out a room brings in each month, but you resent that a stranger occupies your household. 

Because you believe that you should be issued a check every month and not otherwise be inconvenienced by the boarder's existence, you make it a point to wake up at the ass crack of dawn on your days off and make as much noise as you can.  You call this "housework," but what you're really doing is channeling your inner cunt.

Bizarre:  A "partitioned" living room with zero privacy for the "low" price of $650.00.

And why would I pay that price to sleep on your smelly sofa and be subjected to you walking around in your stained skivvies?   

Fuck You Pay Me: Can't use kitchen, laundry, or ever be present.  

Really? Why don't you include your address right there in the ad with instructions to just mail you the monthly rent check.  Or provide a Pay Pal account? That way the boarder doesn't even have to bother moving in. 

Unrealistic: Must fill out a credit check and have references.

This one always makes me LOL - Newsflash, Pollyanna:  A person who is seeking to rent a room isn't going to have good credit and references.  And if he did, he would just sign a fucking lease for his own apartment and have roommates.  

Unreasonable:  The "room" is actually a glorified closet in the attic that is accessed by climbing up a vertical, rickety ladder and can only be "enjoyed" by lying on your back because the ceiling clearance is 3 feet.

Seriously? I think the homeowner would have better luck buying a casket and renting it out from the living room.  The casket would be a lot more comfortable/cooler and at least pick up the wifi signal better. 

Unstable:  Lifestyle alternates between 72 hours of mania followed by an additional 72 of crash caused by the ingestion of psychotropic prescription pills; may or may not have been 5150'd several times before.  

Ah yes, my particular favorite. You know, I was just saying the other day that there aren't nearly enough attention whores popping pills in this country. There really needs to be a lot more people threatening suicide and pretending to be depressed sufficient so that their friends/family are duped into buying the bullshit and end up calling the cops in a panic for help with an involuntary psychiatric hold.  

Assholery:  Sets an appointment and then in the meantime, rents the room to someone else. 

You don't find out that you're shit outta luck unless you call to confirm the appointment.  And that's only IF the asshole takes the call/bothers to call you back.

Extreme Assholery Coupled with Douchebaggery:  (EACD) Shows you the room then takes over an hour to assess whether or not your money is good.  Bloviates to you that there have been many calls about it but the homeowner is being picky and wants to find the "right" fit. After boring the shit out of you about gosh, gee how fortuitous it was to find such an excellent boarder as yourself, thereby convincing you that you have the room, you get a text msg the next morning stating that it was promised to someone else. Thanks for playing and good luck to you!  

The level of douchery involved in this particular scenario is truly astonishing. If you promised a room to another prospective boarder, then WHY would you keep taking calls and showing the room to others?  

Because you are an unethical, self-serving, opportunistic piece of shit, that's why.

These are just a few of the highlights, boys & girls.  I'm sure more will be discovered as time passes.  If you do happen to  find yourself looking at the room rental ads, there really is no tried and true way to know in advance what level of douchenozzle you'll be paying rent to since they are all on their very best behavior.  It isn't until after you move in that you find out you're living with a sack of shit who should be sterilized to prevent the reproduction of another generation of worthless assholes.



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